Surface ship hole-plugging vs submarine hull breach

Used to explain why submarine steel choices are conservative — a hole in a submarine is catastrophic in a way a surface-ship hole is not.

If you get a hole in a surface ship, hopefully you just plug it — we saw pictures of people plugging holes right on surface ships. On a submarine, you get a hole and you probably lose the ship. A big hole and you probably lose the ship, just because by the time you could plug something that thick and that high pressure, you've already flooded most of the thing and it's just going to be going nose down or tail down. So there's a reason why the submarine people are more conservative. Plus, strategically they're part of the triad of nuclear deterrent. Whenever you're talking about nuclear stuff, you're talking big bucks.